BOOK REVIEW: INESCAPABLE BY AMY A. BARTOL

My name is Evie Claremont and this was to be the making of me–my freshman year of college. I’d been hoping that once I’d arrived on Crestwood’s campus, the nightmare that I’ve been having would go away. It hasn’t.

I may be an inexperienced seventeen-year-old, but I’m grounded…sane. I look for rational explanations to even the strangest circumstances. Since meeting sophomore Reed Wellington, however, nothing makes any sense. Whenever he’s near, I feel an attraction to him–a magnetic kind of force pulling me towards him. I know what you’re thinking…that sounds fairly awesome. Yeah, it would be…if he liked me, but Reed acts as if I’m the worst thing that has ever happened to Crestwood…or him. But get this, for some reason every time I turn around he’s there, barging into my life.

What is the secret that he’s keeping from me? I’m hoping that it’s anything but what I suspect: that he’s not exactly normal…and neither am I. So, maybe Crestwood won’t be the making of me, but it could be the breaking of me. I’ve been left to wonder if the dark future my dream is foretelling is… inescapable.

Amy A. Bartol, I did not
see you coming.

The first and most prominent complaint I have about Inescapable is the synopsis. Coupled
with the (notoriously unreliable) word of mouth, the synopsis is phrased in
such a way as to make the book sound run-of-the-mill. Though now that I think
the matter through, perhaps this mundane quality to the description is
specifically designed to lower expectations and ultimately make the reader
exclaim:

Amy A. Bartol, I did not
see you coming.

If there is one thing that Inescapable cannot be faulted with, it's the writing. Having read
the synopsis and come to expect a Twilight-reminiscent charade, the writing
style was the first indicator of just how wrong I would be. Not to be mistaken,
I am not crediting Twilight with horrible writing. I am merely making a point
that since the Twilight craze, many a YA paranormal has suffered a lack of
proper editing and proper wording, all in hopes of being released fast enough
to recapture the "paranormal phenomenon". Inescapable is so far from being poorly
written, it belongs in a different category entirely. The writing style flowed,
and seemed in equal parts effortless and thought-through. This is not a YA
novel written in the broom closet on lunch breaks. This is serious, proper
writing.

If there is any fault to be found in the editing, it's
merely that on occasions the writer got the character names mixed up, and the
editor was none the wiser about it. Not that it's surprising, considering the
names occasionally give a vibe of reading a unique brand of dystopian novel
where the caste system is based around the similarity to the names of the
characters (which is not a half-bad idea for a dystopian novel, and would make
for a quirky read, if nothing else). At one point, Russell is telling Red
that they can't go help Reed. Bunsand Brownie, meanwhile, are inside a building, as are Candence and Caroline. It's not that the names are identical, per se. But
they're easy enough to mix up. (There is also a bit of an overuse of names in
dialogue going on - where characters will repeatedly address one another by
their names while talking, though there's no one else in the room but the two
of them. Read out loud, it sounds unnatural, but it's easy enough to get past
unless one is determined to nitpick.)

And if anything was as big of a surprise as the writing, it
was the protagonist herself. Genevieve Evie
Claremont
does us female readers proud when, in the very first interaction with the
future love interest, she does the unfathomable: she stands up for herself. In
the sea of docile, subservient female leads, Evie's remark that the future love
interest is being unnecessarily creepy, and furthermore wrong about what he is
saying, is as novel a thing as any to read about. Evie's determination to make
her own choices gained her instant likability, and I only wish this resolve
hadn't completely dissipated before the novel's end. On a purely physical
level, Evie was at an understandable disadvantage, and there is plenty of hope
of improvement in the future as she grows
into her strength. On a psychological level, however, I soon found myself
daydreaming about the Evie from the beginning of the novel - the self-reliant
stubborn girl whose life didn't revolve around two boys who are passing her back
and forth like a football ball (which was an apt, if not strangely disturbing,
metaphor).

And on that note, on a completely personal level I felt that
this author was better than this love triangle. While the novel itself came as
a surprise, and a refreshing one of that, the occasional cliché was that much
more jarring, and each and every single time I thought that this author was too
talented to waste her time on those things. The love triangle was particularly prominent,
given that it's more of a relationship-with-an-occasional-appearance-from-a-third-wheel.
While each of the characters involved in it was an interesting enough
individual in and of themselves, as a love combo they were unconvincing at best
and unlikable at worst. In fact, most of my latter frustration with the lead
stemmed from her attempts to rationalize going on with two guys simultaneously,
when she had an obvious, highly evident preference for one over the other. With
every intention to continue on with the series, I can only hope that this
particular love shape (as EpicReads
referred to them) isn't of an annoyingly long-lasting variety.

Outside of the love triangle, the plot flowed as
effortlessly as the writing. Having only read the synopsis once, and briefly, I
took endless pleasure in (for once) not being able to work out what sort of
supernatural entity the lead was supposed to be. Amy A. Bartol has certainly
taken this lore and made it her own, thus making the paranormal aspect of the
story into what is perhaps its strongest and most enjoyable facet. Not that the
humor isn't spot on and the characters interesting enough on their own. They
are. But it's the mythology that ties the whole thing together, and it is the
mythology that promises an array of great things to come. Did I feel the whole
soulmate subplot was necessary? Perhaps not. Was I a fan of the very ending in
terms of the level of supernatural going on? Perhaps not.

But all was forgiven, especially in lieu of an astounding
twist 80% in that not only did I not see coming, I had not even entertained it
as a possibility. From the 80% mark, the events took on a whole new dimension
of unexpected and I found myself applauding the author for the subtle hints
throughout... which I missed in their entirety. In many ways, I had not seen
that resolution coming. Much as I hadn't seen the writer coming in quite such a
pleasing manner.

Inescapable is a
series worth checking out for all fans of the YA paranormal genre (or the YA
brand of urban fantasy, really). It is my sincerest recommendation going into
this book virtually blind in terms of the synopsis - it keeps things
interesting and keeps the reader guessing, with about as much success as the protagonist
(which is not a lot). And if you enjoy it, there are good news. The fifth novel in this series is due to be
released sometime in 2015.

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